Archive for the ‘Christmas’ category

**********************
Yes, I know. Can’t I move on to something else? But I am in a drawing mood and the elephant and dog just seem to be at my fingertips. Hope all have had a great Christmas or if you do not celebrate it, a great break!

Cookies to eat!
Cookies so sweet!
Not terribly neat!
Cookies like feet!

********************************The above are cookies made in part by Drew Herman, Alex Herman, Meredith Martin, Christina Martin, Jordan Segal (and probably a couple of others). The bloodied foot was by Gabrielle Segal. I watched, ate, photographed. Wish I could send some through the ether.

And then there was the old English couple who became Jehovah’s Witnesses–he, because Jehovah, plus butter rum life savers, plus two Witnesses who walked him and his dog up the block a couple of times a day, helped him quit smoking; she, because after sixty years of marriage, they did everything together.

But Christmas (not celebrated by Witnesses) was almost harder to give up than nicotine. If you’d grown up in London during the 30’s, if you’d made it through the Blitz, goose fat and beef lard (and all the ritual dishes involving them) were high in your gastronomic pantheon.

Though it wasn’t the food that was the problem. It was the want of ruddy-cheeked cheer, the cow-eyed Creche, the Crackers! (With their snap and crackle and little funny toys.) The bean in the Christmas Cake, and, even more, the weeks of deciding what this one or that one would like–the special scarf, the purse on sale, the mince tarts baked and packaged–the wrapping!

All solved by the expedience of Boxing Day. Crackers a day delayed were no longer “Christmas” Crackers. Roast Goose was just, well, roast goose; Christmas Cake, fruit cake; and presents? Tokens of appreciation. (With no relationship to Christmas at all.)